


The Gambit

by beautifulterriblequeen



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: But He's Still a Badass, M/M, Moonshadows gonna Moonshadow, Runaan has PTSD, a bit of adventure, how to reach the realm beyond life and death in three easy steps, prosthetics are cool, schemey dragons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 14:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20009917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifulterriblequeen/pseuds/beautifulterriblequeen
Summary: “We both know what you intended next,” the Dragon Queen hissed.Runaan kept still.If that were true, I’d already be dead.





	The Gambit

**Author's Note:**

> AU where Runaan keeps his arm, loses his horn, and meets the Dragon Queen, Luna Tenebris, after squeezing some useful information out of Viren.

Once freed from the coin and returned to Xadia, Runaan spent a week recovering at Luna Tenebris’s palace. Ethari never left his side, easing his hurts and holding him through the nightmares. Runaan never took his hand off Ethari while he was awake, reassuring himself that he was really there. The first thing he did every morning was to reach for him again.

Then finally it came. The summons.

Ethari made sure Runaan looked his best, smoothing the shoulders of his tunic, arranging his braid just so, polishing every last bit of gleaming metal until finally Runaan took his husband's hands in his and held them still. “I will be fine,” he said, hoping he wasn’t lying.

Ethari slid his fingers free and adjusted the new moon opal necklace Runaan wore, centering it just so against his green shirt. “You’d better. I’ll come after you a second time if I have to.”

Runaan’s smile was slow and rich. “I’d expect no less. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

The elves shared a long, heartfelt kiss before two Moonshadow guards came to escort Runaan to see the Dragon Queen.

He knelt before her, fist leaning against the smooth white marble floor in a vast receiving hall, and heard the soft thunder of her easy breathing far above his head.

“You live, Runaan.”

“Thanks to you, Your Majesty. And to my husband.” Runaan rose smoothly and studied the pearly-white dragon before him in all her glossy moonlit glory. Her wings were folded smoothly against her slender sides. Delicate forelegs ended in double-hooked claws that lay half-sheathed in her paws. Her sinuous neck curved with a swanlike grace, and her whiplike whiskers floated on an invisible breeze.

She inclined her head toward him and spoke softly. “I am glad to have one of my assassins returned to me, at least. And if I had my pick, I would pick you.”

The queen waited for Runaan’s grateful agreement, but he could not give it. His eyes hardened and he tucked his hands behind his back. “You shouldn’t. I know the truth now.”

“Yes? And which truth is that? There are so many to choose from.” Her voice remained a lazy moonlit river.

“The truth behind you sending us to take Harrow and his son. You _knew_ your egg had not been destroyed. Yet you ordered us to kill Prince Ezran anyway. The dark mage told me.”

The Queen of the Dragons loomed suddenly over Runaan, blasting his side tails back with an indignant whuff of her nostrils.

The assassin declined to flinch.

Luna Tenebris’s voice was the icy cool of a sudden shadow. “We are at war, Runaan. You go where I point you. There are issues at stake here which you do not—and are not _required_ to—understand.”

Runaan’s mouth twisted. “You _used_ me. As an instrument of _incitement._ You _want_ this war to continue. To _escalate. Why?_ ”

Luna Tenebris’s teeth snapped testily. “Because _that is my will_. Do _not_ question me further. Your place is to obey, and I suggest that you maneuver yourself into a position to begin doing so. _Immediately._ ”

But Runaan’s hands knotted into fists. “I _trusted_ you. I trusted that you could see further, more clearly, than I could. I’ve killed for you! And for what? Warmongering? No. I won’t maneuver myself into any position that allows you to direct me ever again.” Runaan spun on his heel and stalked across the broad marble floor.

“Detain him,” the queen intoned.

Runaan made it ten steps before a dozen Moonshadows surrounded him. His bowblade had not been recovered from Katolis Castle, and there hadn’t been time for a thorough sweep to locate it, so he was too lightly armed to risk melee combat with so many well trained warriors. He lifted his hands in surrender, eyeing them warily. The tiny weight of the moon opal necklace pulled heavily. Nearly any illusion would be better than this reality.

“A Moonshadow, turning on his queen?” Luna Tenebris’s voice had gone dark and rumbly.

“The only thing I turned on you was my back,” Runaan sassed over his shoulder.

“We both know what you intended next,” the Dragon Queen hissed.

Runaan kept still. _If that were true, I’d already be dead._

“Shall I let you choose your punishment, assassin? Perhaps you will choose to allow colleagues of yours to take _you_.” Luna Tenebris’s voice softened wickedly. “You and your family. Shared dishonor must be purged.”

Runaan stiffened sharply at the horrific idea of Moonshadow assassins stalking Xadia to track Rayla down, of them invading his house in search of his beloved craftsman.

“Or perhaps you can bear all the punishment yourself, little elfling. Since you turned against your queen—”

“I did no such thing!”

The Dragon Queen’s voice oozed like thick moonlight. “You were about to, and we both know it. Perhaps you do not deserve the Moon arcanum after all. I could take it from you, in exchange for my oath that your family will remain unharmed.”

Runaan had already lost his soul to dark magic. By a miracle he’d gotten it back, but now he might lose his arcanum to Moon magic. Hard flashbacks to the moment of his imprisonment in Viren’s magic coin flared against the inside of his eyelids. His heartbeat skyrocketed, and his lungs refused to function with more than a panicked flutter. “Please don’t,” he whispered.

“No, you’re right. There is yet a better option.” Luna Tenebris addressed the guards. “Turn this faithless traitor to face me fully, that I may pronounce his fate.”

Runaan’s flashback was so powerful that he could _smell_ Viren’s cell. Two guards seized his arms, spun him around, and forced him onto his knees, bowing his head with a rough hand. Runaan heard the clink of manacles in his memories and struggled for breath.

The Dragon Queen cared nothing for his trauma. “No tricks for you, Runaan. Take his moon opal necklace. And those hair cuffs. All three of them. I know how you use those.”

Brusque hands yanked the necklace free and pulled the silvery clasps from Runaan’s hair while others held his shoulders firmly in place. Fingers searched his braid for weapons and other items, rumpling and loosening it, finding nothing.

Runaan squeezed his eyes shut _. Hold tight, hold tight._

The Dragon Queen towered above her vanquished opponent and tipped her head to observe him, captured and contained. “You thought there was nothing worse I could do to you than what you have already endured? O ye of little faith. Guards, take this blood traitor to the Half Moon Chamber and throw him in.”

“No! Please!” Runaan’s words rattled past his teeth as a cold horror sank into his chest. The chamber was real, after all. Everything Viren had said—confessed at swordpoint—was true. Runaan hadn’t believed him at first—why should he trust any human, let alone _that_ one in particular? But Viren’s details were too perfect. Runaan had begun to doubt. To believe.

And then to gamble.

The guards dragged Runaan away, and he struggled fruitlessly against their combined strength, kicking his heels across the pale marble floor, lost in his own mind, fighting pain and hunger that didn’t exist anymore.

Runaan fought for as long as his guards dragged him, which was a very long time indeed. They descended staircase after staircase into the depths beneath the queen’s lair. Breathless pleas spilled from his lips as the hallways grew darker and stuffier. _Not another cell. Not another cell. Please don’t lock me up again._

The guards swung open a broad door with a half moon carved into its stone face, stepped up to the threshold, and chucked Runaan inside. The assassin had half a second to brace for a hard landing on the floor before reality sank in.

There was no floor.

Inky blackness surrounded him as he spun down and down, flailing, clawing for purchase on anything, bracing for a sudden and sticky end. Perhaps Viren had lied, after all. Perhaps he’d just wasted his life for nothing. Perhaps nothing he’d anticipated was real. Perhaps it had all been illusion after all.

_I’m sorry, my light._

A moonlit circle spun into being below him, and Runaan plunged through it with a hairsbreadth margin before slamming into a cool body of water that stole his breath and knocked him senseless.

He floated aimlessly for a long, breathless moment, and calm finally found him again. The chill water stole the panic from his skin along with his warmth, leaving him cold and focused. He broke the surface with his long white loose hair plastered to his head and shoulders.

A dim light filled the sunless sky. Slender columns rose nearby in delicate white arches that supported a carved Moon rune at the top of their domes. Peaked roofs dotted the nearby grass past the swirls of watery canals that formed the giant Moon rune pool he’d toppled into.

The Moonhenge of old. It still stood, here in the realm beyond life and death, an echo of reality empty of all life.

Empty of _almost_ all life.

A tall Star Touch elf stood just out of reach and offered Runaan a fluffy towel. He seemed entirely unsurprised to see Runaan fall into his prison. “Welcome, weary traveler. I see you’ve received the standard baptism into the realm beyond life and death. How did you find it?”

Runaan gained his footing at the edge of the round pool, stood, and accepted the towel from the ancient archmage’s hand. As he squeezed his hair dry, he willed his own hands not to shake in the presence of the powerful elf. “By fooling the Dragon Queen,” he sassed.

Aaravos’s white brows lifted in pleased surprise, and a soft smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. He tented his fingers downward and faced Runaan directly. “Then you are to be congratulated. You are not my first visitor. But you are the first who intended to visit. Why have you undertaken such peril?”

Runaan pulled himself out of the pool and dropped the towel over its stone lip before turning to face the tall archmage. “I need answers. Luna Tenebris has been warmongering, and I need to know why.”

Aaravos’s smile was lazy and brief. “You needn’t have come all this way for such a simple request. I could have told you through the mirror, if you’d but turned it back on in the humans’ castle after you were freed from that coin.”

Runaan’s eyes hardened. “That was never going to happen.”

Aaravos remained unperturbed by Runaan’s resistance. “And imprisoning yourself here is somehow a better option than performing a blood ritual with me?”

“It is. Because I have a bargaining chip.”

The Star Touch looked down at him with amusement. “Impress me, then, Moonshadow.”

Runaan reached up to the prosthetic horn Ethari had crafted for him. He twisted it free and shook a small moon opal out onto his palm before reattaching the false horn. He crushed the precious stone, spoke a quick incantation, and opened his hand with a swirl of white magic to reveal a sturdy, pale cube with the runes of all six primal sources carved into its faces.

He held the archmage’s Key in his fingertips. “Tell me everything about Luna Tenebris, and I’ll let you out to stop her.”

Aaravos’s golden eyes twinkled at the bold offer. “Tell you _everything_? I’m not sure your lifespan will stretch that long.”

Runaan remained unfazed. “Then speak quickly. I have someone waiting for me. He’ll get himself tossed in here if I don’t return soon.”

Aaravos’s eyes studied Runaan’s, and a smirk pulled hard at one side of his mouth. “Then by all means, let the revolution begin. _Again_.”


End file.
